Prosox and Kuroi’ish, the hackers who added extra, unrelated text and images to several VEVO videos including “Despacito” back in April, were arrested and charged in Paris.
Both suspects, whom the Paris Prosecutor’s Office referred to as “Nassim B.” and “Gabriel K. A. B.,” as reported by Variety, are 18-year-old French citizens. They were charged with six and five criminal counts respectively, one of which related to fraudulent data modification “in an automated data processing system.”
The hack, according to a tweet Prosox, aka Nassim, sent out on April 10, was “just for fun.” The 18-year-old also noted the he “love[s] YouTube.”
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@YouTube Its just for fun i just use script “youtube-change-title-video” and i write “hacked” don t judge me i love youtube <3
— Prosox (@ProsoxW3b) April 10, 2018
Some of the text the hackers displayed on the VEVO videos included pro-Palestine messages, like “FreePalestine” in the title of a Shakira video. The hackers played with other videos by altering their thumbnails, replacing the thumbnail of “Despacito” with an image from Netflix’s Casa de Papel. Artists targeted by Prosox and Kuroi’ish also included Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Chris Brown, Maroon 5, and Katy Perry. On May 5, Prosox tweeted again, reasserting that the hack was “basically…for people to enjoy.”
Since VEVO is headquartered in New York, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is working with the Paris Prosecutor’s Office on the proceedings. So far, there’s no word on what kind of sentences the young men could face.
